IFC’s “Comedy Drop” surprises people with live stand-up comedy

You’re hankering for a slice of pizza, so you slide on into your favorite spot, and just as you’re satisfying your hunger pains, what to your surprise interrupts your everything but a stand-up comedian with his or her own microphone and camera crew?!

That’s what happens in the first episode of IFC’s new webseries, Comedy Drop, with Liam McEneaney kicking things off with an impromptu couple of minutes at the Two Boots pizzeria in the East Village. Wait. Hold on. You mean the pizza place that’s next to a live comedy venue already? So close. And yet, what a (UC)beast of an idea.

Living the dream. Dreaming the life! Am I right, people who remember the early seasons of NBC’s Last Comic Standing, or open mics, or anyone else who subliminally or not needs to buy SNL’s new 24-Hour Energy For Dating Comedians.

Is it heckling when you introduce stand-up comedy and a camera crew to a situation that’s not identified in advance as such? Or is it all fun and games as long as you keep it under three minutes? suDiscuss.

Roll the clip!

For McEneaney’s efforts launching the webseries, here’s a link to his debut stand-up comedy album, “Comedian,” which just came out this month via ASpecialThing Records, and was recorded with full knowledge of everyone in the joint where he recorded it.

Other episodes in the first season of IFC’s “Comedy Drop” feature stand-up comedy from Seth Herzog, Chris Gethard, Brooke Van Poppelen and Kate Berlant.

Kate Berlant has more of a crowd for her ambush set; with more audience members comes more chances for them to talk back.

Somehow, I feel like the reaction to Seth Herzog at this pizza place is one of the two only appropriate responses.

Chris Gethard walks into a Cocoa Bar, and his conversational storytelling style will win the customers over, eventually, maybe. Ladies and gentlemen!

Brooke Van Poppelen tailored her set to the tattoo parlor she walked into in the East Side; the trick is, you’re not supposed to flinch much if you’re inking or getting inked, so how will the audience show its appreciation? Oh, the suspense!

Sean L. McCarthy

Editor and publisher since 2007, when he was named New York's Funniest Reporter. Former newspaper reporter at the New York Daily News, Boston Herald and smaller dailies and community papers across America. Loves comedy so much he founded this site.

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